Fund Sales: From Stealth to Open Play

The newly disclosed data on the holdings of public funds more clearly presents the current fund distribution landscape.

Recently, the latest data on the scale of public fund sales institutions has been released.

Compared to the past, there have been new changes in the statistical methods of this data.

We have learned from the industry that for the first time, the data statistics have separately listed the holdings of stock index funds.

In addition to the active equity funds in the past, which are ordinary stock funds and mixed funds, stock index funds have also been added as a statistical item.

Against the backdrop of the rise in the scale of bonds and index funds and the decline in the scale of active equity funds in the first half of the year, the holdings of different institutions have varied.

According to the public data released by the China Securities Investment Fund Association (hereinafter referred to as "China Fund Association"), among the three major distribution channels, the bank channel still leads in non-currency funds and active equity funds, while the securities firms and third-party e-commerce channels have certain advantages in stock index funds.

In the competition among the top institutions, Ant Fund has comprehensively surpassed China Merchants Bank, Tian Tian Fund and other distribution institutions.

From the perspective of non-currency fund holdings, the bank channel still leads by a large margin.

The data shows that the bank's holdings are 4 trillion yuan, the third-party e-commerce channel is 3 trillion yuan, and the securities firm is 1.6 trillion yuan.

Looking at the holdings of equity funds, securities firms have approached banks.

In terms of active equity funds, banks are still the main force, with holdings of 2.1 trillion yuan, e-commerce is 1.3 trillion yuan, and securities firms are less than 1.2 trillion yuan.

In terms of stock index funds, the securities channel has won overall, with holdings of 772.9 billion yuan, banks are 133.8 billion yuan, and e-commerce is 434.4 billion yuan.

Based on the existing data, you can also see the fixed income battlefield hidden behind the equity data.

Bond funds are the main force in the increase of public fund scale in the first half of the year.

By subtracting the holdings of equity funds from the holdings of non-currency funds, you can get the holdings of bond funds, QDII funds, FOF, alternative investments and other varieties.

Since bond funds account for a large proportion of them, they can be roughly regarded as the holdings of bond funds.

In the battlefield dominated by bond funds, banks lead with 1924.4 billion yuan, followed by third-party channels with 1735.8 billion yuan, and securities channels only have 42.9 billion yuan, relatively lagging behind.

It is worth mentioning that many institutions that rank at the bottom of equity fund holdings have stood out in the PK of bond funds.

Including Industrial Bank, Ping An Bank, Teng An Fund, Ningbo Bank, Ji Yu Fund, Hui Cheng Fund, Postal Savings Bank, etc.

Further combing the internal situation of banks and securities channels can find that China Merchants Bank still occupies a leading position in the bank channel, and other banks have different focuses in different business sectors.

In the securities channel, the focus of fund sales is similar, and it is generally good at stock index funds.

The institutions with relatively large holdings are CITIC Securities and Huatai Securities.

Ant Fund leads the equity fund ranking comprehensively.

Ant Fund's scale is 692 billion yuan, far exceeding other channels, which is 48% higher than the scale of 467.8 billion yuan of the second-ranked China Merchants Bank, and twice that of the third-ranked Tian Tian Fund.

First, from the perspective of active equity funds, the scale of Ant Fund and China Merchants Bank is actually almost the same, and both giants have not been able to avoid the reduction of the scale of active equity funds.

Among them, Ant Fund's holdings decreased from 459.2 billion yuan at the end of last year to 427.3 billion yuan, and China Merchants Bank decreased from 502.8 billion yuan to 425.7 billion yuan, with a larger decline in China Merchants Bank.

Some people in the industry believe that mixed funds include some mixed funds with a high proportion of bonds and some flexible allocation funds.

For Ant Fund, which has more low-risk preference users, the scale growth of these funds has also offset the shrinkage of stock funds to a certain extent.

In the first disclosed stock index fund holdings, Ant Fund has a larger lead compared to other institutions.

The data shows that Ant Fund's holdings are 264.7 billion yuan, while China Merchants Bank only has 41.9 billion yuan.

Some people in the public fund e-commerce channel revealed that during the bull market of funds from 2019 to 2021, the scale of Ant Fund's stock index funds and active equity funds soared at the same time, and the holdings of stock index funds reached about 300 billion yuan early on.

Taking the previously popular China Merchants Zhongzheng Baijiu Index Fund as an example, the total scale of the fund reached nearly 100 billion yuan at its peak.

Some people in the industry believe that in the case of sluggish growth of active equity funds, Ant Fund has laid out in the index fund field earlier and faster, so it has seized the opportunity.

For traditional channels such as China Merchants Bank, some funds with a three-year lock-up period have been opened one after another, resulting in significant customer losses, which has also affected the progress of new active equity funds.

In the battlefield of bond funds, it can be found that Ant Fund's advantage is more significant.

Ant's holdings are 659.2 billion yuan, China Merchants Bank is 394.4 billion yuan, Industrial Bank is 379 billion yuan, and Tian Tian Fund is 208.7 billion yuan.

Why is Tian Tian Fund lagging behind?

In the third-party e-commerce channel, Ant Fund is increasingly occupying an absolute leading position.

Teng An Fund has a place in bond funds, and Ji Yu Fund and Hui Cheng Fund have emerged in institutional business.

Although Tian Tian Fund still has a significant advantage in active equity funds, the decline in holdings is larger, and the gap with Ant Fund is widening.

At the end of the first quarter of 2021, the China Fund Association disclosed the holdings data of fund sales institutions for the first time, and Ant Fund and Tian Tian Fund ranked first and second in the third-party e-commerce channel, which is the same as now, but the gap in the scale of holdings is not as large as it is now.

The latest data shows that in terms of stock index funds, Tian Tian Fund's holdings are less than one-third of Ant Fund's; in terms of active equity funds, Tian Tian Fund ranked third at the end of last year with 402.9 billion yuan, but the scale of active equity funds shrank by 140.3 billion yuan to 262.6 billion yuan in the first half of the year, lagging behind ICBC's 310.5 billion yuan; looking at the total amount of non-currency funds, in the past three and a half years, Tian Tian Fund has increased from 432.4 billion yuan to 552 billion yuan, an increase of 28%, while Ant Fund has increased from 890.1 billion yuan to 1351.2 billion yuan, an increase of 52%.

According to the semi-annual report of 2024 disclosed by Orient Wealth (300059.SZ), Tian Tian Fund's operating income in the first half of the year was 1.417 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 30%; net profit was 64 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23%.

In terms of sales, Tian Tian Fund's fund transaction volume in the first half of the year was 86.03 million transactions, a year-on-year decrease of 14%, and the sales volume was 851.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4%; the transaction volume of non-currency funds was 54.32 million transactions, a year-on-year decrease of 30%, and the corresponding sales volume was 499.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of less than 1%.

From the above data, although the transaction activity of Tian Tian Fund in the first half of the year has declined significantly, it has a limited impact on the sales volume, and the net profit has increased.